CASE STUDY: Connected Communities Suffolk

Setting up a social prescribing service during the COVID-19 pandemic

 

By Colin Baldwin

Localities Manager – Suffolk County Council

 

 

We’re part of Connected Communities – a European project operating in some areas of England and Northern France, focused upon using social prescribing to tackle rural isolation and loneliness amongst older people.

 

We finally got the go ahead for our project in late 2019. We appointed our VCSE partner deliverers – Suffolk Family Carers – to provide our Link Workers, and then I started to look at what systems we needed.

 

Quick set-up of a proven system

What impressed us early on about Simply Connect is their flexibility and adaptability. They had an existing model and system that was being used successfully in other parts of the country, so we were able to replicate this to set up our service in a short space of time.

 

“The Simply Connect team really get the voluntary sector – which is not surprising given their background.

This was a real bonus because we wanted the VCSE sector to be the lynch-pin for our social prescribing service.”

 

Adapting to support district and borough Councils

We’d planned to launch on 23 March 2020 – which was essentially when the UK went into national lockdown – so it wasn’t the best time to launch a social prescribing programme!

Instead we had to very quickly set up a single point of access for everybody across our district and borough Councils.

“Simply Connect really came into their own when COVID19 struck.”

I was worried the change of plan would cause problems for the system – but it didn’t. The team said “That’s fine, no problem – we can change things“.

They liaised with our VCSE provider and Council officers and came up with a revised way of working.

We set up a central hub so all calls were going into one place – these were then assessed and referred through Simply Connect into the relevant area team and support service. The built in assessment and triage process really helps workers understand a clients needs.

 

Adapting to our needs

A real strength and asset of working with Simply Connect is the ability to adapt to what was a threatening, but also opportunistic situation.

“We now have a system that is really, really responsive.”

Everyone’s loving using it. I don’t understand the technology behind it – but it works!

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For more information about Connected Communities Suffolk, visit suffolkfamilycarers.org/